EDD Creation/Editing Resources?

[ashrae-editor]

Are there any good, readily available (free to use/download) resources for creating EDDs specifically and Structured templates generally? I'm looking for something much more in-depth than the "Create an EDD" topic in the Help files, but the Structure Application Developer Reference doc focuses more on the application development side and doesn't seem to go into much detail on EDDs.

For example, in trying to set up general rules, I can't find information on what wildcards are available, their format or use, how parentheses are used to group items, etc. I also don't see much on how to set up formatting rules.

Thanks!

JMW

[Russ Ward · Accepted solution]

Hi JMW,

I think you have the wrong book. Try this one:

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/pdfs/Structure_Dev_Guide.pdf

All this stuff used to be in the same book. I guess now it's split into a "reference" and a "guide." I'm not sure of the wisdom in that.

Russ

[Ian Proudfoot]

Russ,

The reason for splitting the original guide into two volumes was to mirror the FDK documentation. One guide book to learn the principles and the other comprehensive properties reference to use while developing. When I did the split I also added a lot of previously missing information. Ultimately I would have taken it further, but ran out of time.

The biggest down-side is the potential to miss one or other of these documents when searching.

Ian

[Russ Ward]

Hi Ian! I didn't realize I was talking about your work! Good thing I didn't elaborate

In truth, I thought the content went well as a single book, but I can't possibly complain that somebody is actually maintaining the documentation. In the case of the FDK, I think the content could also be in a single book. When viewing the content on a screen, I think the page count is not relevant. And we all know that FM can handle it on the authoring side.

But this is just my opinion. Thank you for keeping some life in the documentation. I have relied heavily on both the Structure Ref and the FDK Ref throughout my career and have always regarded them as some of the best technical documentation I've ever read. Except for my own, of course.

Russ

[Ian Proudfoot]

No problem Russ!

This wasn't a recent project, it was done for FrameMaker 8.0 back in 2007 if I remember correctly. A lot of effort was taken to break the original document down into DITA topics as an Adobe requirement. Unfortunately that plan was dropped by Adobe before the work was complete so it was all stitched back into what you see now. A lost opportunity in my opinion.

Ian

[ashrae-editor]

Thanks again, Russ!